A superior court judge sentenced Podgurski in absentia on June 21, 2013 to 20 years and four months in state prison. She was convicted (PDF) of 29 felony counts stemming from insurance fraud. Podgurski worked as a clerk for Amtrak and held health insurance policies with six different companies, then she filed claims with all of them after she declared that she was disabled from a supposed fall in her home in August 2006.

Authorities said her regular salary was about $44,000 per year, but under her policies if declared disabled, Podgurski would potentially collect up to $40,000 in benefits. At the time she was charged, she had received more than $664,000 in disability payments; however, private investigators found that Podgurski was fully able to move about and even took several vacations both in the United States and abroad.

During her trial in January 2013, Podgurski failed to appear in court. Her new charge could bring her an additional two years in prison, Steve Walker, a spokesperson for the San Diego County District Attorney, told Ars.

Walker would not provide any details as to how Podgurski was caught in Mexico, but he did say that the Los Angeles Times’ account of her being caught “through her Twitter account” was not accurate.

“The defendant in this case was brazen in both the large-scale fraud she committed and the way she mocked the criminal justice system,” said Dumanis in the same statement. “Law enforcement, and in particular the US Marshals and Fugitive Task Force, did a great job tracking the defendant down and taking her into custody.”

Cyrus Farivar
Cyrus is a Senior Tech Policy Reporter at Ars Technica, and is also a radio producer and author. His latest book, Habeas Data, about the legal cases over the last 50 years that have had an outsized impact on surveillance and privacy law in America, is due out in May 2018 from Melville House. He is based in Oakland, California. Emailcyrus.farivar@arstechnica.com//Twitter@cfarivar